Molecular watch created by Americans uses the same principles as the most accurate devices in the world and can be placed inside a smartphone. The solution will make location engines such as GPS more efficient. To note, some of the best GPS watches are now very accurate.
Don’t use this as an excuse to be late, but the watches you have on your wrist, on your phone, and even on your computer aren’t as accurate as they seem. The most accurate of these devices can even delay a few tens of seconds a year. This may not seem like a big problem, but many technologies, such as GPS, rely on instruments that are too sharp to function properly. Thanks to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, smartphones will be able to set hours similar to atomic clocks, which are now considered the world’s standard time.
The system created is a molecular clock that works on the same principle as atomic clocks, but with whole molecules, not just atoms. The difference is that it is the size of a conventional chip and uses little power, allowing the technology to be easily integrated with mobile phones and other mobile electronics. “We seek to explore a completely different physics. We do not observe the behaviour of atoms. We look at the behaviour of molecules, ”explains Ruonan Han, one of the authors of the article detailing the solution, published in the journal Nature Electronics.
The watch will not be as accurate as of the best atomic models, but it will be much smaller and 10,000 times more effective in purpose than currently available quartz devices. According to the developers, the solution could greatly improve GPS accuracy and help in situations where the signal is not available, such as deep-sea explorations. “Our view is that in the future, you won’t have to spend a great deal of money putting atomic clocks on devices. Instead, you could have a small gas capsule stuck to a cell phone chip, and the system will work just as accurately, ”explains Han.
The capsule contains gas-shaped carbonyl sulfide molecules, which are responsible for measuring time. The device emits high-frequency radiation to these molecules, causing them to start spinning. This oscillation of molecules and atoms, when exposed to given radiation, is always very accurate – it is responsible for the best clocks in the world, which delay only one second every 1.4 million years.
Challenges
One of the difficulties faced in creating the chip with atomic precision was to produce the radiation necessary for its operation. For the molecule to spin properly, it must have a frequency of approximately 231 gigahertz. Today’s electronics, however, cannot transmit frequencies exceeding 5 gigahertz, and it is impossible to overcome the 10 gigahertz barrier because of the limitations of the physics involved in these devices. Above that, the information can no longer be transmitted by cables, either copper or gold, used in circuits.
To overcome this obstacle, the MIT team has created metal structures capable of amplifying the low frequency produced by the chip and turning it into a signal with hundreds of gigahertz. The solution was cost-effective because the watch consumes only 66 milliwatts of power, less than some features commonly found in cell phones such as GPS, Wi-Fi and the display itself. During testing, the watch showed that it only delays 8 seconds every thousand years, which is 10,000 times more accurate than conventional watches. Another advantage is that the chip was created with the same technology used in traditional electronic components, so it can be mass-produced and inexpensive. For creators, however, the biggest benefit technology can bring is making localization systems more accurate. Today, someone who takes app can run it without experiencing any time delay. This is how molecular clock technology influences the timeliness of the present and the future.
